Vittorio Matteo Corcos | Dreams / Sogni, 1896 | Art in Detail

Current location: National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.

Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859-1933)* returned in 1886 to Florence, where he painted the prominent and the fashionable portrait of a modern girl, Elena Vecchi, which has become the most emblematic image of the so-called Belle Epoque.

His most notorious portrait, however, was that of his mistress, Elena Vecchi, the daughter of a naval officer who carned his fame as Jack La Bolina, the author of popular adventure stories.

Dreams belongs to a long line of impressionist images of women reading, but the model is not interrupted with book in hand or disturbed in a moment of reverie. Instead the yellow Flammarion novels lie closed on the bench, while Vecchi gazes provocatively at the viewer.

Her crossed legs and indecorous pose were considered scandalous for the period, causing quite a stir when the painting was exhibited in Florence in 1896.

Literary suggestions

In the artistic climate that pervaded in Italy at the turn of 19th century, the subjects tackled by Corcos* employed their engaging narrative to reflect the literary suggestions of French naturalism and symbolism; since the artist’s wife was fond of intellectual pursuits, she introduced him to the circle of the Marzocco, the newspaper that occupied the ground between Carducci’s solemn declamations, the intimate observatory of Pascoli’s Eternal Child and Gabriele d’Annunzio’s sumptuous study.